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What do you think would happen if everyone who attended an IT service management (ITSM) class – ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, MOF – went back to work and talked to the person who sits next to them about how their organization could apply best practices? Or, what if everyone shared their ideas with just the people in their work groups. Those organizations would see tremendous benefit. Even small steps – think plan-do-check-act – can reap large benefits over time.

But why stop there? Many organizations have people in different departments and locations, perhaps even in different parts of the world, who must work together to realize the true benefits of a consistent, integrated approach to ITSM. A community of practice can be used to bring these people together. A community of practice (CoP) is group of people who are bound together by similar interests and expertise. Members are active practitioners who come together to share information, experiences, tips and best practices. Members provide sup…

Techniques used to measure employee satisfaction include informal one-on-one discussions, focus groups and periodic surveys. As with customer satisfaction surveys, for accurate and reliable results, employee satisfaction surveys should be created with care by people who understand how to develop questions that produce unbiased information. In other words, ask your HR folks for help! So what questions should you ask? "How satisfied are you with your job?" is a good place to start. A question such as: "Compared with a year ago, how would you describe your overall job satisfaction?" can provide additional insight. You can also ask employees to rate their satisfaction with areas such as: Reward and recognition programsCareer development and advancement opportunitiesEducation and training Supervision, coaching and feedbackTeamworkAvailability of resources needed to do the jobAbility to contribute to organizational goals And in the spirit of continual improvement, it’s alw…

I have often been asked about how to implement a good design coordination process.My response is have you ever thought of implementation of a new process from a CSI approach?First let’s understand what the purpose and objective of a design and coordination process should be.Ensuring that the goals and objectives are met by providing and maintaining a single point of coordination and control for all activities and processes within the design stage of the lifecycle.If we approach this from a Continual Service Improvement perspective the first question to ask is:

What’s the vision? Come to an accord among key stakeholders about what it is you want to create and what the underpinning critical success factors should be in support of the defined goals and objectives of the organization.Will they ultimately support the long term mission and vision of the business leadership? Where are we now? Set that baseline starting point about the current condition of where your service design activities are…

Implementing the guidance provided by ITIL is very much like cooking. If you have ever cooked something using a recipe (even if it is the directions from the package) you know that although you can vary somewhat from the recipe or directions, you cannot change the recipe substantially and expect the stated results. When cooking cakes or sweets, if you add too many eggs or too little oil or too much sugar or leave out an ingredient, what will result will probably not be what you intended. Recipes (and package directions) are best practices just like ITIL. Package recipes especially have been formulated to achieve the optimal results each and every time you make the food. But we must follow the recipe to get the results.

This is not to say you cannot adjust (or “adapt”) the recipe based on your own tastes or even serving suggestions from the package. Adjusting or adapting does not mean rewriting the recipe or completely ignoring the package directions because you do not agree or like the…